HN itself is routinely scraped. What makes me most uncomfortable is deanonymization via speech analysis. It's something we can already do but is hard to do at scale. This is the ultimate tool for authoritarians. There's no hidden identities because your speech is your identifier. It is without borders. It doesn't matter if your government is good, a bad acting government (or even large corporate entity) has the power to blackmail individuals in other countries.

We really are quickly headed towards a dystopia. It could result in the entire destruction of the internet or an unprecedented level of self censorship. We already have algospeak because platform censorship[0]. But this would be a different type of censorship. Much more invasive, much more personal. There are things worse than the dark forest

[0] literally yesterday YouTube gave me, a person in the 25-60 age bracket, a content warning because there was a video about a person that got removed from a plane because they wore a shirt saying "End veteran suicide".

[0.1] Even as I type this I'm censored! Apple will allow me to swipe the word suicidal but not suicide! Jesus fuck guys! You don't reduce the mental health crisis by preventing people from even being able to discuss their problems, you only make it worse!